We seldom drink soda because at the end, it was still empty calories of sugar.

However, in the rare occasion hot days that we had been experiencing in the Pacific Northwest, Hot Lips were mostly definitely treats for us.

Hot Lips was a small pizza chain out of Portland, OR, and they bottled their own sodas that could be purchase at Total Wine or BevMo!

What made them highly coveted for me was the sodas were made with real fruit juice and certainly one of the cleanest ingredients one could find, usually contained sparkling water, fruit juice, lemon juice and cane sugar.

Juice content ranged anywhere from very low percentage for lemon and ginger (which were potent juices and understandably low amount of juice usage) to my favorite berry ones were about 10-15% juice to more than 90% for pear and cranberry.

Only the pear one was made with juice concentrate.

The fruits were all locally sourced in OR and native for us Northwesterners.

They had an array of flavors including exotic Marionberry, black raspberries, along with cranberries, pear, lemon and cherries to name a few.

On their website, they stated that they had special seasonal flavors on tap at their pizza stores — they were definitely on my to-go list next time I visit Portland.

My favorite was the Marionberry soda.

I loved that when I poured the soda into the glass, it was murky (black raspberries and red raspberries were also murky).

Literally as if berries where crushed into pulp, and fizzy water was added to it.

Beautiful purple color, with distinctive marionberry flavor, wild, light and refreshing, it felt like Pacific Northwest in a bottle.